


Conversations in the Dark

by Flutiebear



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening
Genre: Arlathvhen, Eluvians, F/M, Gen, Post-Canon, Strange Meetings, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-07
Updated: 2014-03-07
Packaged: 2018-01-14 22:25:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1281013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flutiebear/pseuds/Flutiebear
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tasked with a secret mission from the Warden-Commander, Velanna travels to the arlathvhen, where she encounters two very unlikely bedfellows--and more than she bargained for. Originally for a Tumblr prompt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Conversations in the Dark

**Author's Note:**

> Original note from Tumblr: 
> 
> This fic takes place a few months after the end of DA2, during the arlathvhen, or the once-a-decade meeting of the scattered Dalish clans, which was hinted in Mark of the Assassin to be taking place very soon. I don’t know exactly what goes down at an arlathvhen, but I imagine it’s a little like summer camp for elves. Maybe they even have marshmallows. Who knows.

Velanna stumbles over a branch, once, twice, then pitches gracelessly to the ground. Around her the crickets fall silent. _Great._ She can’t even walk in the dark anymore without sounding like a halla stampede. Clearly, too many nights behind the inflexible stone walls of Vigil’s Keep have dulled and confused her senses. She might as well be a dwarf now.

Nevermind that she can no longer hear the forest like she once did, the subtle sounds of leaf and beast now overpowered by the dulcet thrumming of the darkspawn song in her blood.

She doesn’t like to let herself think about that.

“Who’s there?” bellows a deep, male voice. “Declare yourself.”

Velanna holds her breath. The voice is clearly not elvhen. No, a voice that flat and unmusical can only be human, which means that Velanna’s somehow found herself outside the bounds of the _arlathvhen_ , the exact _opposite_ of where she’d intended to go. _Creators._ And to think she once was a First.

“It’s alright. You can come on out.” chirrups a second, female voice, much lighter than the first. Definitely one of the People—though what an elf is doing in the company of humans, Velanna shudders to consider. A captive, perhaps? A spy? Velanna feels anger, too long dormant, flare to life within her. “Come now, don’t be shy. We aren’t going to hurt you.”

“Don’t make promises we can’t keep, Merrill,” the human growls.

“Oh for Creators’ sake, don’t be ridiculous. Whoever it is doesn’t plan to harm us; they would have shot us full of arrows by now.” The elf named Merrill makes a sort of huffing noise, almost like a peeved Mabari. For some reason, Velanna finds the sound deeply unsettling. “Now stand down. You look silly wagging your broadsword at the shadows.”

There’s the raw whisper of a sword being sheathed, but Velanna doesn’t move.

“Come on out now,” continues Merrill. “I’m starting to feel a bit silly myself, standing here in the dark, chatting away at nobody.”

Velanna grimaces. There’s no helping it: She’s been found out, and to deny it will only make her seem more suspicious. So she lifts her chin proudly and steps toward the voices.

She doesn’t have to go far before she stumbles into a small clearing, unlit by campfire or lyrium lamp. Enough moonlight spills down, however, for Velanna to make out two figures: the chatty, elven woman who Velanna presumes is Merrill, and at her side, a hulking mass of armor topped by unruly black hair. Behind them is not an aravel but a tent, after the human fashion, though for some reason their bedrolls are spread on the ground at Velanna’s feet.

And they’re _together,_ Velanna notes with distaste.

“There you go,” says Merrill. She snaps her fingers, and a small lavender spirit flame winks alive in her palm. It casts a pale pall over the clearing, illumination without light. Velanna can see now that Merrill is thin and dirty, and very, very pretty. Her companion, in Chantry-issue armor, is not so pretty, with eyes gleam a bright lyrium blue. He is also very large, much larger than Velanna initially estimated. “Not so frightening, are we? I’m Merrill. Who are you?”

Ignoring the question, Velanna takes a step closer into the clearing.

“Merrill, eh? I’ve heard of you,” she says, crossing her arms. “You’re the one they won’t let in, who sleeps on the outskirts of the camp. The one with—“

Her gaze darts to the tent. Perhaps the Warden-Commander’s spies _were_ right. For there’s only one reason why Merrill would still keep a tent if she and her companion were sleeping outside, together.

For the first time that night, fear, cold and sharp, roils in Velanna’s gut.

“—with the human pet,” she finishes lamely.

“Carver’s not a pet,” Merrill says huffily. “Not a proper one, at least. He’d need a great deal more feathers for that.”

At that, the human harrumphs and busies himself with some invisible task on the ground. He watches Velanna as covertly as he can. But she stares back at him with open belligerence. She will not be cowed, especially not by a human Templar. Ex-Templar. Whatever he must be nowadays. Who can keep it all straight anymore?

“Then what is he to you?” She glowers at the human. “Your probation officer?”

“Her cook,” he rumbles.

“I see.” She doesn’t see, of course. It’s one thing for human and elven Wardens to travel together, even to fall in love. After all, the Taint breeds strange bedfellows. But for a civilian Dalish and human – and a mage and a Templar at that? It’s sickening, especially considering the mage war going on. Velanna isn’t sure which of the pair she feels more disgusted by.

Velanna casts another peevish glance at the tent. She should investigate it now, while she has the chance. But it’s so dark in the clearing. Too much cover. Now isn’t the time for a fight or even an interrogation, especially not with a Templar about. It’d be better to leave and continue her mission in daylight. At least now she knows where Merrill is.

Velanna turns on her heel. “Well then. I’ll be going.”

“Wait.” Slowly Velanna turns back, in time to see Merrill drop the hand she’d outstretched back to her side. “What are you doing here?”

“Getting lost. Obviously.” Velanna is glad for the dark; if there’s one thing she knows about herself, it’s that she’s a terrible liar. “I was looking for the _arlathvhen.”_

“That’s a funny thing, isn’t it? A Dalish getting lost in the woods. Doesn’t happen all that often.”

Merrill chuckles. Velanna does not.

“Well, the _arlathvhen_ is that way,” Merrill chirrups, gesturing over her shoulder in the vague direction of the ominous tent. A chill unfurls down Velanna’s spine. “Straight up the hill, a left at the fork. You can’t miss it. Or, well, I guess you already did. Oops. Sorry.”

“You still haven’t told us your name,” the Templar interjects.

“Observant, aren’t you?” Velanna tromps him past without another word.

***

As luck would have it, Velanna sees Merrill again the next day, without the company of her pet Templar. She is lugging behind her a large handcart, laden with lumpy cargo. Over it is tied a dropcloth that looks suspiciously like the tent canvas from last night.

The cloth jostles, and Velanna thinks she sees the gleam of sunlight on silver. In her blood, the darkspawn song crescendos, then fades.

As soon as Merrill sees Velanna, she drops the cart handles. “Why, if it isn’t the lost halla!” she cries, waving amiably. “Are you on your way to the _arlathvhen?_ It’s just up this path. We can walk together, if you like. I’ll have to wait outside, but they’re bound to let you in, at least.”

Velanna nods distractedly, more interested in finding that gleam again. If the Warden-Commander’s intelligence was right, and Merrill _is_ lugging an Eluvian around, Velanna needs to know, and before anybody gets hurt.

Not that Velanna wants to hurt Merrill either. But the Warden-Commander’s orders were clear: _Do whatever you must, but you cannot let the arlathvhen gain control of the artifact._

Velanna purses her lips. She hopes it won’t come to that. But if it does, it’ll be much easier to handle one elf on her own, woman-to-woman, mage-to-mage, than an elf with a Templar nipping at her heels.

“So,” she says as nonchalantly as she can, “Where’s your cook?”

“Cooking.” Merrill shrugs. “Where’s your clan? You never told me which it was.”

Velanna inspects her fingernails. “Don’t have one.”

“Me neither. They’re all, er, gone.” Merrill’s gaze becomes faraway, and she suddenly looks much older than her pink cheeks and luminous skin might suggest.

“Gone?”

Merrill’s mouth flattens to a hard line. “Dead.”

A softer woman might have fallen silent, or at least offered condolences. Velanna is not a softer woman. “All except you,” she says.

At her side, Merrill’s hand clenches into a fist, then relaxes. Long white scars striate her wrist like tree rings. Velanna knows those scars. She has similar ones. All Firsts – and former Firsts – do. “I don’t want to talk about it,” Merrill says softly.

“Fine.” Velanna takes a step closer and reaches to lift up the cloth. “So what’s under the—“

Suddenly Merrill is between her and the cart.

“Don’t touch that!” Her voice echoes on the trail like a thunderclap, and the sound causes Merrill to shrink into herself. She chuckles nervously. “I mean—it’s nothing special. Nothing you’d care to see.”

Velanna reluctantly pulls her hand back, but entirely not out of reach. “And what is this nothing,exactly?”

“You’re very curious today.” Merrill narrows her eyes. “Remind me, who are you, exactly?”

“Just a friendly neighbor,” says Velanna, smiling brightly, with far too much teeth. Velanna could never quite get the hang of charm, tact, diplomacy. She wishes Sigrun, or even Nathaniel, were here. Conversation was always their arena, not hers.

“What is your name?” Merrill’s voice has become as hard as the flagstones in Vigil’s Keep.

“Velanna,” she offers with a conciliatory chuckle.

Merrill doesn’t smile back. “For an elf who’s here for the _arlathvhen,_ you sure do seem to spend an awful lot of time not actually _in_ the _arlathvhen._ ”

Velanna drops the cheerful facade. Screw diplomacy. “One could say the same about you,” she replies coolly.

”Like I said last night, they won’t let me in.”

“And why is that again?”

Merrill narrows her eyes. “I suspect you already know. Or think you do.”

“What’s under the blanket, Merrill?”

“It isn’t any of your concern.”

“It is my concern if it’s dangerous. If people could get hurt.”

“I know what I’m doing.” Merrill grits her teeth. “Nobody’s going to get hurt.”

“Oh, like your clan?”

“You know nothing of my clan!”

“I know they’re all dead,” Velanna says evenly, “and you’re not.”

Merrill glares at Velanna for a long moment, and anger, hot and electric, crackles from her in great waves. Velanna is sure that at any moment, she’ll disappear under a great wave of spirit lightning. She’d welcome combat. Fireballs are so much simpler than conversation.

“Fine,” grits Merrill. “You want to see so badly?” She reaches behind herself to the cart, and in one swift motion, yanks off the cloth, revealing—

Junk. Heaps and heaps of junk. Broken statuettes. Fractured crystals. Smashed plates, dinged silver platters. Ripped canvases. An errant pair of torn trousers. Inside the cart is a veritable mountain of refuse with little obvious use or even sentimental value. Yet for some odd reason, the darkspawn song throbs in Velanna’s blood stronger than ever.

“There,” says Merrill. “Let your curious eyes feast their fill.”

“W-what is all that?”

“Scrap. We’re peddlers. I’m peddling.” Twin blooms of heat appear on Merrill’s cheeks. With each sentence she takes a step forward; Velanna doesn’t even realize she’s stepping backward at the same time until she’s a good ten feet from the cart. “We’re starving and my clan is dead and my home is destroyed and I have nowhere else to go, so I’m peddling my old possessions to people who hate me, so that my human lover and I will be able to eat. Are you satisfied?”

“Oh,” says Velanna lamely. This isn’t how she expected this conversation to go. If only Sigrun were here! “I didn’t expect that.”

“No, I expect you didn’t.” Merrill turns back to the cart and adjusts the cloth, recovering the junk. “Go away. Leave me alone.”

Velanna nods and, with no small sense of relief, obliges.

***

The next time they meet, it is Merrill who finds Velanna, just sitting down to lunch in her makeshift camp.

“Who are you really?” she says without preamble. Spirit flame, purple and threatening, curls along her hands and wrists. “And no lies this time.”

Velanna leaps to her feet. Her staff is, of course, across the clearing. Not that she ever needed it to make a fireball, though. But being unarmed certainly won’t help matters. “How did you find me?”

“I asked. Turns out I’m not the only one barred from entering the _arlathvhen,_ am I?” Merrill narrows her eyes, and the clearing crackles. At any moment, she could call down a Tempest. Is her pet Templar with her? Velanna can’t see him, but that doesn’t mean he’s not under cover somewhere. “Now I asked you a question.”

Velanna sighs. “I’m Velanna, of Vigil’s Keep. I’m with the Grey Wardens.”

“The Wardens?” Merrill’s eyes go wide. The flames on her hands wink out. “So _you’re_ the Warden we’ve been looking for?”

Velanna frowns. “W-what?”

“All this time, I thought the Wardens were all human. At least, all the ones I’ve ever met have been. Great big men with bushy beards. Except Anders, of course.”

“Anders!” Velanna wants to rush forward, to grab Merrill by the shoulders and shake her violently. But she restrains herself, lest Merrill yet unleash that Tempest. “You know of Anders?”

“Of course I know Anders. Who do you think told me where to find you?” Merrill scrunches her lips in confusion. “Really, now. I thought Wardens were better informed than this. Also, that they had a better sense of direction.”

Velanna shakes her head. A lot of things are happening all at once, none of which make much sense. “You were looking for me,” she repeats slowly, “because Anders told you to.”

“Not because of Anders. Because of—well, because of something else.”

“Which is?”

“Come with me.” She beckons. “I’ll show you.”

Velanna follows Merrill into the forest, picking through the underbrush with considerably less agility and care than Merrill seems to manage. It’s hard not to be envious. “I’ve been looking for you too, you know,” she says.

“I know.” Merrill’s voice is much lighter now, as if a great weight had been lifted from her shoulders. “Or, well, I knew it was strange that we should keep running into each other, so far from the _arlathvhen._ It was like you were barely even interested in it. And then Carver said you smelled like a mage, but different, like your blood had a ‘different kind of song’ or something. I don’t know how he tells that sort of thing. I think it has to do with the lyrium he drinks. But he seemed rather insistent about it. Anyway, I knew something was suspicious about—Ah, here we are.”

Merrill stops so abruptly that Velanna nearly runs into her. They’ve come to a trailhead, where the Templar stands by the handcart. At the sight of Velanna, he frantically begins readjusting the canvas covering, his lips pursed into a grievous frown.

“Carver!” Merrill cries. “I found the Warden!”

“It’s her?” He rolls his eyes and lets his hand fall from the cloth. “Oh goody.”

“Merrill,” Velanna grabs Merrill’s arm and spins her about face. “What is going on?”

“We need your help.”

Merrill walks over to the cart and pulls back the canvas, pushing some of the bigger junk aside. Then she motions to Velanna to draw near. “It’s this,” she says, pointing down into the cart.

Velanna looks down, but all she sees is a heap of glass and metal among more glass and metal.

“I don’t see anything,” she says. But even as she says it, the darkspawn song in her blood belies her words. The pull is strong now. Very strong. Like a thousand joyous voices, harmonizing to crescendo.

“It’s an Eluvian,” says Merrill.

Velanna suddenly finds it hard to breathe.

“Or, at least, it was,” continues Merrill. “I smashed it. Tore it to pieces with my bare hands.”

“ _Creators,_ ” whispers Velanna. “And you didn’t catch the Taint?”

“Well, I—“ The question seems to have thrown her. “It wasn’t ever working, even when it was in one piece. I never got it to work, not past the first time we – I – found it. After Tamlen and Mahariel disappeared, I—“ Merrill regards the Eluvian fragments with deep sadness. Velanna follows her gaze. Some of the pieces are no more than powder. Merrill must have truly dedicated herself to the Eluvian’s destruction. “It doesn’t matter now. It’s broken, too far beyond repair, never to be fixed.”

“Nothing is ever completely beyond repair,” mutters Velanna.

“The thing is, I don’t know what to _do_ with it now. I can’t carry the pieces around with me forever; what if I lose them? And I can’t just toss them out into the garbage either. What if some stray kitten comes across them? Or some metalworker takes a piece and tries to smelt it into another mirror? Who knows what could happen then?”

 _A sixth Blight, that’s what._ But Velanna keeps her mouth shut.

“That’s why I came here,” Merrill continues. “To find you. Anders said there’d likely be a Warden here, that they always sent one delegate or another. I just never expected you to find me first.” Tears glisten in her eyes, and the human—Carver—walks over to her, places his large hands on her shoulders. “You have to help. The first Warden I ever met, the one who smashed it in the first place, he seemed to know all about the Eluvians. Well, you must know about them too. You must know how to dispose of them safely, right?”

“Well, I—“ Velanna isn’t sure what to say. She doesn’t want to _lie,_ especially not to a weepy girl with a Templar at her back. But locating and retrieving the Eluvian had been Velanna’s mission. Disposal, Velanna had gathered, wasn’t quite what the Warden-Commander had in mind.

“Please,” Merrill begged. “You have to help me. You’re the only one who can.”

“You’re right about that,” Velanna says with more confidence than she feels. “Give me the shards. I can take it from here.”

“No!” Merrill shakes her head. “No, I can’t do that. I brought this, this, _abomination_ into the world—I have to see this through.”

“That’s really not necessary—“

“You don’t understand. My clan—my people—“ Merrill closes her eyes, but no tears fall. “No, I have to be there. I have to see it destroyed, for good, with my own two eyes. For my clan.”

Velanna looks to Merrill, then Carver, then back at the shards. Is it worth it to press this? Is it worth it to start a fight, to debilitate the two of them just to bring back a sack full of powder?

No, not debilitate. She’d have to kill them both. Cleaner that way. Fewer questions. Fewer loose ends. Who would ever miss a rogue elf and a Templar anyway? That’s what the Warden-Commander would tell her to do. That’s what she _ought_ to do.

Carver’s thumb strokes Merrill’s shoulder, and she leans into his touch. For the first time, Velanna notices how young they both are, and how very, very tired. Velanna might find the fact of their union abhorrent, but it’s clear that there’s real affection between them, that the two of them together have seen more than any two young ones ever should. She wonders when was the last time they had a meal together that they hadn’t had to catch themselves, one that truly filled their bellies and left them warm with cheer.

“Fine.” Velanna sighs irritably. “Fine. I can’t believe I’m doing this, but – come with me to Vigil’s Keep. We’ll take care of it there. ”

Merrill’s eyes light up, and Velanna can’t quite look her in the eye. But if the Eluvian is to be recovered and restored, then Velanna thinks it’s better to let the Warden-Commander handle its former owner personally, rather than delegating the task to a lowly spy like herself.

After all, if the Warden-Commander had wanted this mess to be solved by conversation, then maybe she should have assigned Sigrun to it instead.


End file.
